Re: opensource satellites

>Has anyone contemplated making amateur satellite designs like P3D
>"opensource"? Then at least software errors may be detected better
>since more people would review the designs. It would also be neat to
>see how exactly a sophisticated piece of machinery like this is
>constructed!
Remember how AO-10 burned its kick motor longer than it was supposed
to? The wiring error in the LIU was there to see in the schematics and
PC board layouts. If only someone had found it before the firing, it
could have easily been worked around in the software. Of course, only
a handful of people (including me) had copies of the prints.
Perhaps if they had been published on today's web, some unknown
college student obsessed with knowing everything there was to know
about the spacecraft would have noticed the error and pointed it out.
To cite Linus's Law: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
That's Linux Torvalds, originator of Linux, as paraphrased by Eric
Raymond in his essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
--Phil
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